


The Mysterious Thing

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [193]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Dissociation, Gen, Interlude, Mithrim, Poor Maglor, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, not a nice place to be, the other side of the lake, title and body quotes from a poem by Leonie Adams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23089060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: I shall have the waves for my bed.
Relationships: Maedhros | Maitimo & Maglor | Makalaurë, Maglor | Makalaurë & Sons of Fëanor
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [193]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	The Mysterious Thing

_What plummet, seas, to sound you—_

_All the long reaches spun out silver-white—_

_Turn you, and cast drowned riches?_

_Or how again, O velvet night,_

“I am going to live by the seashore,” Maglor says, meaning it. “I shall have the waves for my bed. I’ll tuck their foamy edges under my chin.”

“And then the whales will come,” Celegorm interrupts rudely, poking his head in, “And ho, ho! They shall eat you.”

“Go away, wretch,” Maglor snaps.

Maedhros shoos Celegorm out for once. “Go on,” he urges. “You were speaking a poem.”

_When the sky, stooping with its glittering load_

_About the elf-locks of the curious grass,_

_Scatters its sparklings, will you part almost_

_Upon the quintessential host?_

“You should eat.” Curufin, white-cheeked, mocking, always coming out of the dark.

Maglor’s eyes hurt, despite the dark. He has begun to catch light sideways, with careful, seeking glances, so that he can shut it out and hide.

“I’ve eaten.” (He hears—he hears that old voice. That old argument.)

“We have to be strong.” Curufin all but forces the bread into his hand. “Who knows when they shall grow tired of waiting, and attack?”

He means their family. He means Finrod, tanner and thinner than Maglor remembers, but still himself; still fierce and blue-eyed, still too _knowing_ to be really kind.

(What would kindness even be, to Maglor?)

He means Fingolfin, and Fingon—

Somehow, Fingon knew.

_Or how, the figment spirit sleeping,_

_Can it render body ghost,_

_In its dream unseat the heavy monarch,_

_Conjure to the bleak wild coast_

Daylight reigns outside. A cruel monarch, in a country where there is no king.

 _Maybe the one in the mountain_ , bloody Ulfang suggests, in the flat voice with which he used to speak, not the hideous croak of his dying. _Maybe there is a king, Maglor Kanafinwe, and you offered him your brother as payment for the use of his lands._

Maglor would drink, if the taste and scent of liquor did not bathe him in memory. He would sleep, if he could.

But Curufin is nagging at his elbow, and Celegorm is burning a fever that will not break but for blood, and the young ones are…

He does not even know how to protect them, whether they need it or not.

Still, the men and women of Fort Mithrim look to him as a leader. That is the greatest mockery of all.

_I shall have the waves for my bed._

He has not burned the shards of his _clairséach_ , even though he has sworn to, in the long nights. He wants a different price, by Heaven or Hell, but there is no one to pay it to.

He hears the shreds of old songs, because that is the blood that he was given, unbreaking.

_Its sunk, its deep delight,_

_Its night of mists divide, recall how, flitting_

_Above the pallid thing,_

_Joy has an azure wing?_

He wonders, should it come to that, if the lake would do.


End file.
